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Explore an amazing underwater universe inhabited by larger-than-life creatures that ruled the oceans millions of years ago in Sea Rex 3D – now showing in HMNS IMAX!.

Mosasaurus hoffmannii skeleton on display at the
Maastricht Natural History Museum,
The Netherlands

Guided by Georges Cuvier, considered by many to be the father of paleontology, viewers learn about predators such as the ichthyosaur, plesiosaur, and mosasaur. These ancient creatures could grow up to 50 feet and could weigh as much as 15 tons.

Learn about the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous eras and how life evolved in the deep oceans of Earth. See a mosasaur battle the Great White Shark’s ancestor and witness the mating habits of the plesiosaur.

You’re going to love the film’s time line of the history of the Earth, showing the evolution of the first single cell organisms to the mammals that evolved and began to walk on land. What I found fascinating is the amount of time each of the dinosaurs ruled the world in comparison to humans. Dinosaurs walked the earth for over 160 million years, while humans have only been around for about 200,000 years comparatively.

Evidence of giant marine predators were first discovered in a mine shaft in the Dutch city of Maastricht in 1770, when the partial skull of a Mosasaurus hoffmannii was uncovered. Sea Rex 3D takes you on a journey from the creation of earth until the meteor that killed off 95% of life 65 million years ago. Don’t miss this incredible story about our planet’s history and the monsters that ruled the sea for over 120 million years.

Recently we received the question on our blog, “How far down do you have to dig to get to the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary?” A similar question that I get in anthropology and paleontology is “How far down do you dig to find a T. rex…..or a Dimetrodon….or an Australopithecus?”

We usually don’t dig down. We dig SIDEWAYS!

Fossils are not that common. You could rent a back-hoe and dig at random in North Texas for a month and not find anything. You need to find those few, special layers that have bones or shells.

So….the best way is to use Nature’s Bulldozer.

Here’s how it works. Nature cuts into rock layers using rivers and streams. River banks and the sides of arroyos show us cross-sections of the rock. We use these natural cuts to search for the layers rich in fossils.

Edaphosaurus pogonias

My HMNS crew has walked, hunched over, for days at a time, scrutinizing the banks of gullies in North Texas, without seeing a thing worth digging. But we must have patience. In the PermianRed Beds, for instance, we do find new sites on average every two days. Last month, we found four spots that had bones of the fin-back Edaphosaurus, one of the earliest plant-eaters that ever evolved.

We didn’t dig those four spots because the bones were few and fragmentary.

But we found a fifth spot in the bank of a gully that had a whole vertebral column of the fin-back Dimetrodon, the top predator of the time. Here we dug in, sideways, and recovered a large part of the skeleton, including hips and shoulder.

To get the Cretaceous-Tertiary transition fossils, we go to Raton, New Mexico. Here steep river banks expose the sediments from 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs went extinct. We can dig in sideways and excavate thin zones of black clay that preserve pollen and spores from the plants that lived just before and just after the great dino extinction.

To find fossil hominids in Africa, first we’d search aerial photos, looking for cuts made by rivers and streams into sediments laid down about 2 million years ago.

Lucy’s Legacy, an exhibition featuring the world’s most famous fossil, recently opened at Discovery Times Square Exposition in Times Square, New York. The exhibit will remain on display until October 25, 2009.

The Lucy exhibit has been an exciting catalyst for discovery, discussion, and debate within the scientific community. In this series of blogs, Dirk presents all sides of the controversy surrounding Lucy’s existence and significance while skillfully separating fact from fiction with supporting evidence and research.

Do you enjoy debate about scientific theories or issues? If so, prepare yourself for a great read while perusing the following blogs by Dirk. In addition to his perspective and logic, Dirk also provides links to research and evidence that will leave you on the edge of your seat…and excited about evolution!

Why are genetics important in the development of humans? More than just appearance, genetics play a role in where we live and even how we survive. In the following blogs, Dirk explores where genetics has contributed to history and evolution.

Sure, they’re adorable and entertaining to observe but chimps and monkeys offer far more than that! They provide valuable information about human behavior and progress. Follow-up with these blogs and read Dirk’s presentation of our connection to these magnificent animals.

The study of fossilized remains (like Lucy and other hominids) offers an exciting opportunity to draw parallels on our own existence and physicality. What did they look like and how did they live? Dirk has explored these questions in the following blogs:

If you ask a fossil to share the secrets it holds, it will provide invaluable information and insight into the past. But how can we piece the puzzle together? Dirk explains the wisdom of what happens when fossils meet modern technology…and dating begins (pun intended).

At a dig site in North Texas, the Houston Museum of Natural Science is investigating the animals that would have died off when this first mass extinction event occurred. Recently, a production crew from the History Channel came along on-site – and their footage of Dr. Bakker and the Museum’s team airs tonight at 8 p.m. as part of a two hour special called (aptly)First Apocalypse.UPDATE: In case you missed it, the special re-airs locally Saturday, Jan. 10 at 9 p.m. and a few hours later, Sunday morning at 1 a.m. (Check your local listings.)

In this post, Dr. Bakker explores several extinction events, including the first, Permian extinction you’ll see featured on the History Channel tonight.

In the early 1800’s, paleontology astounded the world when fossils documented the phenomenon of mass extinctions, times when the whole menagerie of big terrestrial critters went extinct.

The first mass die-off that was discovered killed the gigantic mammoths, mastodons, ground sloths, saber-tooth tigers and dozens of other large mammals. This extinction event occurred during the Ice Age. The Ice Age Event didn’t hit small species – if you were a vole, mole, rat, bat or chipmunk, your species had a good chance of surviving.

Today, we know that the extinction took place between 2 million and ten thousand years ago.

DINO-DIE OFF – 65 MILLION YEARS AGO.

By the 1830s, a second giant extinction event was revealed. All the huge Dinosauria disappeared at the end of the Age of Reptiles. Small creatures – birds and salamanders, lizards and frogs, snakes and furry mammals – survived in great numbers.

DINO-DIE-OFF BOUNCE – OPPORTUNITIES FOR FURBALLS.

Mass extinctions weren’t all negative. Dino-die-offs kick-started evolution in the survivors. From the little furry mammals who survived came a wonderful new evolutionary wave of big predators and herbivores – horses, rhinos, hippos, water buffalo, elephants, bears, tigers, cheetahs and wolves. This Darwinian bounce happened every time there was a catastrophic extinction.

THE LATE PERMIAN DISASTER – 250 MILLION YEARS AGO.

Digging in oceanic strata during the mid-1800s showed yet another catastrophe, when the Permian Period ended. Most common species of marine life disappeared, including trilobites, corals, and many species of shellfish.

Die-offs struck the land too – most of the big land reptiles, who filled the role of Top Predator and Top Herbivore, died out. Many small species persisted and from these humble survivors came the next wave of big land animals, including the dinosaurs.

WHAT KILLED THE LAND GIANTS?

Many theories sprung up to explain the great die-offs: the agent of extinction was identified as:

sudden increases in earth temperatures, or

sudden decreases in temperature, or

changes in atmospheric gases, or

changes in humidity, or

abrupt rise of mountains, or

abrupt disappearance of mountains, or

draining away of shallow seas, or

increase in volcanic eruptions, or

sudden impacts of meteorites, or

invasion of foreign species from one continent to another.

TEXAS RED BEDS – EXTINCTION # 1, 285 MILLION YEARS AGO.

Diadectes, side and top view. (c) Dr. Robert T. Bakker

To sort through all the possible solutions, it would help to find the very first case when large land animals evolved and then died-off. North Central Texas preserves this earliest apocalypse in the red-stained rocks laid down in the Early Permian. This extinction was long before the event that struck at the Late Permian.

Beginning in 1877, Texas excavations showed how the earliest large land herbivores evolved. These plant-eating pioneers were wide-bodied, low-slung reptiles known as “Cross-Biters,” Diadectes. Diadectes and its kin were the first large land animals to acquire the wide molars and big guts needed to digest leaves and branches from terrestrial bushes and trees.

The members of the Diadectes Family were the commonest land herbivore for fifteen million years…..and then, suddenly, they went extinct. The pattern at this first die-off matches what we’ve seen in the other land extinctions – small species were far more successful in living through the event.

This first die-off opened niches for the survivors. New and spectacular large herbivores evolved from small ancestors. In the Texas Red Beds, we find super-wide-bodied caseid reptiles who reached weights of more than a half ton.

The wide-bodied caseid reptile. (c) Dr. Robert T. Bakker

EXTINCTION #2 OPENS OPPORTUNITIES FOR FAUNA #3 – THE DOME-HEADS.

The wide-bodied caseids flourished for millions of years in the Middle Permian – then, the second extinction struck. Caseids disappeared. Evolving into the gap were advanced mammal-like reptiles with thick bone foreheads. There were both giant carnivores (anteosaurs) and giant herbivores (keratocephs).

Keratocephus, having a bit of trouble with anteosaurus. (c) Dr. Robert T. Bakker

The Houston Museum continues digging in north Texas, where the Red Beds record the earliest waves of large land animal evolution and the first extinction events. Many mysteries remain. But one pattern seems confirmed:

Mass die-offs on land are targeted like smart bombs. If you’re a big herbivore or big carnivore, you have the highest probability of going extinct.

Learn more about theFirst Apocalypse, and see Dr. Bakker and the Museum’s paleontology team in action, tonight at 8 p.m. on The History Channel.